Containers with lids are commonly used in food shops to store and display bulk foods. These containers may be made from a variety of material such as plastic and the like. Flexible plastic hinges for connecting a lid to a panel of such a plastic container are well-known. Reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,670.938 which discloses a hinge having ribs at each end that are received by a first groove located on a first panel of a plastic box and a second groove located on a plastic lid.
Furthermore, a variety of hinged joints have heretofore been designed for effecting a hinged connection between panels such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,539,955.
Some of these hinged joints include clamping mechanisms for clamping a panel portion such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,487,690, while U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,064 shows wall portions connected to provide an entrance for insertion of a display which portions include a plurality of plastic projections to grip the display card.
Lidded containers made of plastic are costly. In addition, bulk foods are generally delivered to food shops in cardboard containers, from which the bulk foods must be transferred to the boxes made of plastic to allow convenient storage and display.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a hinge for mounting a lid on a cardboard container, which hinge can also be adapted for mounting a lid on a container made of plastic. It is a further object of this invention to provide an efficient and inexpensive means of providing covers for boxes of all types, and in particular cardboard boxes.
The hinge disclosed herein can either be extruded from a plastic such as polypropylene, in the manner known to those skilled in the art, so as to define a web of the requisite thickness so as to allow flexibility of the hinge along said web. Alternatively, the hinge disclosed herein can be extruded from polyvinyl which is more resistant to a large number of flexure cycles than polypropylene by means of the co-extrusion process disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,563,381 so as to define two parts of a hinge made of rigid polyvinyl and an intermediate connecting web made of flexible polyvinyl. More particularly, the profile of the hinge is constructed of rigid polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, with the web portion being of a clear flex PVC.